Unreal Games to pay $500,000 in fines and refunds after “Fortnite’s Counterintuitive, Inconsistent, and Unusual” Gameplay

The U.S. federal regulators said Monday that video game company Unreal Games will pay over $500 million in fines and refunds after they settled complaints of children’s privacy and methods that tricked players into making purchases.

The Federal Trade Commission said it had secured the record-breaking settlements for two cases from the makers of the hit game “Fortnite”.

The chair of the FTC said that the default settings of the game tricked users including teenagers and children.

In this case, “Fortnite’s counterintuitive, inconsistent, and confusing button configuration led players to incur unwanted charges based on the press of a single button,” the FTC said.

Players could, for example, be charged while trying to wake the game from sleep mode, while the game was in a loading screen, or by pressing a nearby button when simply trying to preview an item, it said.

Epic Games said it’s making the payment to resolve concerns over “past designs of the Fortnite item shop and refund systems.” The FTC will use distribute the money “to Epic customers at their discretion,” the company said.

The company said that statites written decades ago don’t specify how the gaming system should operate. The laws have not changed but their application has evolved and long- standing industry practices are no longer enough.

A Settlement on Epic Under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) Using a Data Collection Strategy: A Discussion with the FTC

As part of the agreement, Epic will pay $275 million to the US government to resolve claims it violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by gathering the personal information of kids under the age of 13 without first receiving their parents’ verifiable consent. It is the largest fine the FTC has ever imposed for a rule that it enforces, the agency said Monday.

“No developer creates a game with the intention of ending up here,” Epic said in the blog post. “We accepted this agreement because we want Epic to be at the forefront of consumer protection and provide the best experience for our players.”

FTC Chair Lina Khan said the settlement reflects the agency’s heightened focus on privacy and so-called “dark patterns,” a term used to describe design elements intended to nudge users toward a company’s preferred result.

Khan said that the protection of the public, and especially children, from online privacy invasions and dark patterns was a top priority for the Commission, and these enforcement actions made it clear that the FTC is cracking down on these practices.

The FTC further alleged that Epic made it more difficult to cancel purchases of in-game items by burying the option at the bottom of the screen and by requiring consumers to push and hold a button on their controllers to complete the cancellation. The FTC said that the cancel button was the number one reason users clicked on it, after surveys showed it was more prominently displayed.

In its blog post, Epic said it has agreed with the FTC to implement a feature that explicitly asks Fortnite users whether to save their payment information for future use. The feature is live at the moment. The company also recently rolled out a more limited version of “Fortnite” for younger players that allows them to access some features while awaiting parental consent but that restricts chat and purchases.